Thursday, January 11, 2007

A nasty little rumor

UPDATE --- I've been reading many blogs over the past few days, as this rumor has heated up. Nobody, including myself, will claim that Ohio State lost because of Ginn's injury. I have never made excuses for the defeat...we got beat. Period. The discussion on the topic is interesting to me, but that's all it is...discussion.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I heard something today...and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I have a couple of friends inside the Ohio State football locker room, and apparently "something" happened on the sidelines of the game Monday night.

I will not be revealing my sources, but I will assure you that they are good enough for me. Debate what you hear as you wish, deny or confirm the existence of this rumor, whatever you want. I'm passing on what I have been told.

As you may or may not have known, Ted Ginn Jr has been playing all year with a fractured bone in his foot. Early reports discussed a bad toe, but were never explored in-depth.

Anyway, one play into the BCS Title Game, Roy Hall rolled up Ginn's foot and sent Ginn limping to the locker room for tests. Later in the quarter, Ginn came running back onto the sidelines, clearly anxious to return.

The rumor says that Ginn's father, upon seeing his son ready to play again, sought out Junior and told him that he would NOT be entering into the game again. Words along the lines of "you're in the draft after this game" and "it's not that important". Ginn sported a pair of crutches in the 2nd half.

I am not going to take issue with it. IF it happened, I can understand why he forbade his son to play. Millions of dollars a year....yeah, that's tempting enough for me to say that to my son. And IF it happened, it upsets me a little bit for reasons I can't properly assess.

I hope it didn't happen. But it's the info I have and I felt it necessary to share.

Unfortunately it sounds just right. Nevertheless, he had a scholarship to play ball while he was at Ohio State. That's what insurance policies are for. He should have been permitted to play if he wanted to and the team doc cleared him.